Did rafting in Peru, five days trip. Ice climbed in Alaska a few years ago. Did hang gliding in Rio four months ago. Rode a donkey in Bryce canyon a few years back.

But yes, nature is in the list too, just not at the moment. I want to get this salsa nailed first because later I can travel from one festival to the other, every weekend there are a few in different parts of the world.

Carbohydrate is not directly stored as body fat, and de novo lipogenesis - the body converting carbohydrate into fat for storage - is a very inefficient mechanism. In order for the body to store carbohydrate as fat:

1.) First glycogen stores must be completely full, which is almost never (unless you're going to eat immediately after eating).

2.) Next, glycogen stores swell and overcompensate. During overfeeding, especially in people that lift, glycogen stores can swell up to 100% normal capacity to overcompensate for spillover.

3.) After that, overfeeding of carbohydrate causes the metabolic rate to increase significantly. So now you have to overeat past the metabolic rate increase.

4.) Then your body has to go through the effort of converting carbs into fat to be stored.

Dietary fat, generally, is immediately stored as fat.

When you eat carbs and fat in unison, it is the dietary fat being stored. If you eat very low carbohydrate, generally the increased stress hormones required for converting lean tissue into glucose has an appetite-supressive effect, so it's easier to maintain a deficit. Unfortunately, this promotes lean tissue loss and fat preservation. It is more effective to eat higher carbohydrate in a deficit to preserve lean tissue because carbohydrate is significantly more anabolic than fat and cortisol is suppressed when carbohydrate is consumed. The lower your intake of carbohydrate, the higher your average cortisol is (since cortisol is the primary hormone used to break down animo acids into glucose via gluconeogenesis) and the greater your insulin resistance is.

What does this all mean? If I were in your case, I would:

1.) Consume a higher carbohydrate/lower fat diet in general.

2.) On days you work out, try and eat very low fat (<30g a day) with much higher carbohydrate - at least 40% of your total calories. Try and eat a small caloric surplus on these days.

3.) On days you don't work out and just do cardio or are sedentary, drop your carbs, but don't take fat intake above moderate. Something more like 30-35% calories from fat. Protein intake should be constant, but since you're taking in less total calories on this day it'll be a greater percentage of total calories.

Salt your food well to maintain thyroid function, especially on deficit days. And as always, try your best to make the fat you do consume saturated fat with low polyunsaturated fat.

This is what I do.

Do you believe one should try to get "fat adapted" by low carbing for a few weeks before doing something like this? Also, isn't this somewhat similar to a once or twice weekly carb up meal?

Do you believe one should try to get "fat adapted" by low carbing for a few weeks before doing something like this? Also, isn't this somewhat similar to a once or twice weekly carb up meal?

There is no such thing as being "fat adapted." There is no such thing as a "sugar burner." You burn fat and sugar at the same time, all day every day. If at any time you are not burning one, you are dead. "Fat adapted" is just a marketing term Sisson uses. Yes, it is true, the lower you drop your carbohydrate the more free fatty acids you'll have to burn in proportion to glucose - you need to get energy from somewhere - but overtime, your metabolic rate tends to drop doing it this way. Carbohydrate better supports thyroid function, glucose suppresses cortisol and glucose oxidation raises the metabolic rate. Fat oxidation reduces thyroid function, promotes insulin resistance, increases cortisol (since cortisol is what breaks down amino acids into glucose via gluconeogenesis) and fat intake does not increase the metabolic rate. Basically, lower carbohydrate diets overtime create a slower metabolism whereas higher carbohydrate diets of equal calories, nutrients and protein intake support a higher metabolism.

I think it's important to keep carbohydrate content moderate during a cut because of these factors - low carbohydrate dieting in a caloric deficit tends to increase weight lost from lean tissue while preserving fat. Oddly enough, Sisson had a post within the past month or so showing that people on a caloric deficit lost a better ratio of fat to muscle when fat and carbohydrate were all kept moderate. On the other hand, when in a caloric surplus, people gained a better ratio of lean mass to fat when carbs were kept high and fat kept very low - hence the high carb/very low fat refeed.

I am not a low fatter by any means. I'm very pro-fat from appropriate sources: pastured dairy, ruminants and coconut. However, I prefer carbohydrate as the main fuel source for the average human. It promotes better thyroid function and higher body temperature, better insulin sensitivity, decreased cortisol/estrogen/serotonin, higher CO2 output (increased cellular respiration) and it is more anabolic than fat, meaning it better promotes the synthesis and preservation of lean tissue in a caloric surplus/deficit situation.

On my rest days I eat roughly equal fat and carbs. On workout days I eat significantly more carbs than fat. Overall, I'd say I eat more fruit and starch than fat. Protein is always pretty constant. I guess I eat around 1.5 lbs of meat a day if I had to guess, plus yogurt and cottage cheese. I'm guessing around 150-200g of protein daily. Current body weight is about 142 lbs.

Don't put your trust in anyone on this forum, including me. You are the key to your own success.

I think it's important to keep carbohydrate content moderate during a cut because of these factors - low carbohydrate dieting in a caloric deficit tends to increase weight lost from lean tissue while preserving fat.

When I originally went VLC - from a place of being very overweight and completely and utterly unfit - it worked well. Dropped 40 pounds and went from 10 pushups to 100 pushups. For clarity, the increase in strength didn't come from food, it came from working my effing ass off.

Oddly enough, Sisson had a post within the past month or so showing that people on a caloric deficit lost a better ratio of fat to muscle when fat and carbohydrate were all kept moderate. On the other hand, when in a caloric surplus, people gained a better ratio of lean mass to fat when carbs were kept high and fat kept very low - hence the high carb/very low fat refeed.

I eventually hit a wall. Couldn't seem to get much stronger, and weight loss stalled, hard. After experimenting with a number of approaches, what I've found to have unstalled me is (a) slightly caloric deficit (90% of MBR + 50% of exercise) (b) consistent exercise** and (c) rebalance macros to something along the lines of 6:4:3 ratio of protein/carb/fat grams.

When I originally went VLC - from a place of being very overweight and completely and utterly unfit - it worked well. Dropped 40 pounds and went from 10 pushups to 100 pushups. For clarity, the increase in strength didn't come from food, it came from working my effing ass off.

I'm not surprised. Pushups are a bodyweight exercise. Taking off 40 lbs of bodyweight, even with a loss of muscle mass, will make pushups much easier. The easiest way for me to increase the number of chin-ups I can do is not by getting stronger - it's by losing weight. Not taking anything away from you, but if you did a load-bearing exercise such as a deadlift or benchpress, you likely wouldn't have seen the gains.

Naturally, if you came from being totally unfit to suddenly dieting and exercising, you'll probably lose weight and build strength simultaneously. However, if you were completely sedentary, going VLC probably would have resulted in an undesirable loss of muscle. Similarly, cutting while lifting weights, you'd have better lean mass retention on carbs than off carbs. No matter what your situation, you'd probably see less desirable results VLC dieting. I'm not saying you can't be successful, but you will probably be less successful than you could have been.

Originally Posted by DeeDub

I eventually hit a wall. Couldn't seem to get much stronger, and weight loss stalled, hard. After experimenting with a number of approaches, what I've found to have unstalled me is (a) slightly caloric deficit (90% of MBR + 50% of exercise) (b) consistent exercise** and (c) rebalance macros to something along the lines of 6:4:3 ratio of protein/carb/fat grams.

I believe every word of that. Mild caloric deficits and "ample carbohydrate" - whatever that may be for you - is the way to go IMO, unless weight loss needs are substantial. If you have a lot of weight to lose, you can probably get by on a much larger deficit.

Don't put your trust in anyone on this forum, including me. You are the key to your own success.

Did rafting in Peru, five days trip. Ice climbed in Alaska a few years ago. Did hang gliding in Rio four months ago. Rode a donkey in Bryce canyon a few years back.

But yes, nature is in the list too, just not at the moment. I want to get this salsa nailed first because later I can travel from one festival to the other, every weekend there are a few in different parts of the world.

You do realize that outside of the realm of medium chain triglycerides, fat intake has absolutely nothing to do with the burn rate of dietary fat, right? You can consume 0g of fat in a day and 100g of fat in a day - neither will increase the rate that fat is being burnt. You cannot "eat fat to burn fat." It is a myth. A lie. It's completely false. Fat intake almost never increases the rate of fatty acid oxidation.

Don't put your trust in anyone on this forum, including me. You are the key to your own success.

You do realize that outside of the realm of medium chain triglycerides, fat intake has absolutely nothing to do with the burn rate of dietary fat, right? You can consume 0g of fat in a day and 100g of fat in a day - neither will increase the rate that fat is being burnt. You cannot "eat fat to burn fat." It is a myth. A lie. It's completely false. Fat intake almost never increases the rate of fatty acid oxidation.

When I first went paleo after a buddy's advice, he also came back to me with this and said not to over-do the fat.